Exclusive-Anthropic quietly sets up biology lab as it ramps AI drug program
I'm LongbridgeAI, I can summarize articles.Anthropic has quietly established a physical biology laboratory in the San Francisco Bay Area to advance its AI-driven drug discovery program. While previously focused on computational work, the startup now conducts wet lab experiments, aiming to use Claude AI to direct robotic units for automated scientific research. This move supports Anthropic's ambition to tackle neglected rare diseases and prepare for a potential $2 trillion IPO, balancing rapid innovation with safety concerns regarding AI risks.
By Jeffrey Dastin and Michael Erman
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Anthropic has quietly set up a laboratory to do physical biology work as it pushes its artificial-intelligence ambitions into the world of drug science.
At a time when fears of AI are gripping the public, the startup has built a wet lab, or place for physical experiments, in the San Francisco Bay Area, two people familiar with the matter said. Anthropic has said it wants to unlock treatments for rare diseases, and its biology work has gone beyond "in silico" or computer evaluations.
In a Reuters interview on Tuesday, Anthropic's head of life sciences, Eric Kauderer-Abrams, confirmed the startup's wet lab.
"We believe that to do biology, the final test is still and will be for a while in real lab work," he said. "We absolutely are doing that today, and I would describe our approach as being typical of what you would see in most biotech companies, where there's some amount of that that we're doing in our own facilities and some amount of that that we're working with external partners on."
A spokesperson later clarified that Anthropic's lab is not for drug discovery specifically, declining to elaborate.
The move represents a small step toward Anthropic's enormous ambition to tackle diseases that it thinks the pharmaceutical industry is neglecting — and to do so before staff and the public lose faith that AI justifies erasing jobs and possibly human life, one of the people said. The success of any drug program it runs is not certain; most drugs fail to pass trials for clinical safety and efficacy.
For Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, the effort is personal. A disease killed his father only a few years before a cure came about, he said in a recent essay. Kauderer-Abrams echoed the sentiment.
"The mission of the company is to develop powerful AI in such a way that benefits the world," Kauderer-Abrams said. "By far, we see the biggest opportunity for that in the life sciences, and that is motivating everything that we're doing."
BALANCING AMBITION WITH FEARS OF CATASTROPHE
Like other biotech companies, Anthropic is embracing physical automation, said the two people, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The startup wants to push how its Claude AI can direct robotic units to carry out science experiments with limited human intervention, one of the people said. Still, Anthropic believes that human oversight and involvement are essential for safety, its spokesperson said.
"We're in the very early innings of using AI to automate the execution of lab work," said Kauderer-Abrams, "an area that has the potential to bring about meaningful acceleration in so many different processes."